Thursday, February 15, 2018

Remember This?

http://politigootch.blogspot.com/2016/

Of course not. Nobody actually read it.

Well a lot's happened since the furor over Trump's impending refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election. He actually backed down and accepted the decision. And graciously too.

What's fun about this article is rereading the section that went:

            There is so much handwringing about how this rigged election talk could trigger a 
           “grievance movement” among [Trump's] tens of millions of followers who will insist 
            Hillary Clinton is not the legitimate president and is actually a criminal. Wake up. 
            There are already tens of millions of Americans who regard Barak Obama, 
            Democrats and Liberals as foreign agents planted among them to bring down the country.

Well it seems the old cliche of being "through the looking glass" has never been more snugly apt at describing our situation. Where Hillary and the Democrats may be a subversive cult out to destroy America, they apparently won't be doing it with the aid of the Russians. Surprise, surprise! It turns out that Putin's dictatorial ruthlessness in snuffing out freedom of thought and any form of dissent is just what the electorate needed after all. And der Trump knew it all along. 

Watching the right wing pivot 180 degrees to embrace our elected Republican leadership's dependence upon -- and gleeful implementation of -- Russian autocratic repressive policies after more than sixty years of vilifying and demonizing them (St. Reagan's "evil empire" after all) has been the most breathtaking example of life imitating art I've ever witnessed. When I read 1984 those many years ago the spectacle of a government abruptly switching enemies in the middle of a fight and the enthusiastic embrace of such a sleight of hand by a complicit populace seemed more an exercise in poetic license or suspension of disbelief in the service of plot development than a realistic portrayal of a society living an existence entirely scripted by The Party. And yet... 

When do we change the answers on all our Social Studies tests to the question: "Who won the Cold War?"