Looking back at the blog over the past few months, I see a few obsessions emerging. Nothing surprising there—of course we’re all suffering from pandemic fatigue, and I’m not surprised to see my worries about the 2020 election as topics.
In my October 26th post, If There Ever Was a Time to be Apolitical, This Isn’t It, I wrote as follows about the “best-case scenario” of a decisive Biden victory:
Everything goes right, and even a few court skirmishes in select states are not enough to overturn the will of “We the People.” No doubt it will still cause chaos—because of 45’s brain-dead supporters, not to mention the Sociopath-in-Chief himself—but maybe we can finally begin to recover from the most damaging, divisive, and flat-out exhausting administration ever.
Thankfully, that came to fruition.
But then came the absurd “Stop the Steal” movement, culminating in the events of January 6th, a day that should live in infamy the way Pearl Harbor and the Kristallnacht still live in the history books today.
Not Even Surprised
I remember exactly where I was when 9/11 happened: at the gym.
I was switching between machines, lifting weights, when I noticed many people had stopped their workouts and were riveted to the TV screens around the treadmill area. They watched in horror and shock as Flights 11 and 175 crashed into the World Trade Center towers.
Most, if not all of these people apparently could not believe what was happening. And they were even more shocked to learn that it was intentional—that there were people from other parts of the planet who actually hated us.
I wasn’t surprised at all. Not in the slightest.
You see, I’d been abroad, and I knew that the perception of the US in other parts of the world wasn’t based on marketing, nationalism, or even actual patriotism. It was based on the US government’s actions.
In fact, before the 9/11 terrorists were found to be Middle Eastern, my first thoughts had gone much closer to home.
Perhaps they were from Chile, where the US had supported brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet in a coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende all the way back in the early 70s. Or maybe they were from another Latin American country, Nicaragua, where Reagan had financed, trained, and armed the Contras in opposition to the Sandinistas—with the help of the CIA, of course.
But it turned out I was wrong, after all. The 9/11 crew were all from our good pals Saudi Arabia. Lucky for us, eh?
If Ignorance Is Bliss…
Most of my fellow Americans remain blissfully ignorant of these aspects of our history even today. I doubt any of it’s being taught in school, but of course, if a college professor dared to mention it, he’d probably be branded a “dangerous leftist.” Such is the world we live in now.
Even more sadly, the ongoing brainwashing of millions of Americans via right-wing media has led to a situation where not only do some of them think the press is an “enemy of the people” (the mainstream media, disdainfully referred to as “MSM”), but they also falsely believe that nationalism and patriotism are the same thing. So it became easy to convince them that the election was stolen. In fact, it was a foregone conclusion by way of the logic-bending lie, “If I win, the election wasn’t fixed; if I lose, it was fixed.” I referred to these fascism supporters as “brain-dead” in my October 26th post, not because I think they are all equally stupid, but because this setup seems to be proving that the very malleability of the human brain puts us in real danger.
And so today’s post headline—a reference to The Who lyric Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss—isn’t intended to imply that the new administration will be the same as the last one. It surely won’t be. But so far, at least, this year is still feeling a hell of a lot like last year.
I’d hoped that the outcome of the November election would bring some kind of relief, but I also knew I probably wouldn’t feel 100% relaxed until some time around January 21st. Last week’s horrific events demonstrated that it’s much worse out there than I’d realized. And that’s really saying something.
Maybe instead of God Bless America, we should start praying, God, save us from ourselves.
