Once upon a time, in a land just around the bend,(pun intended!!!) a wunderkid named Dubya held the keys to the kingdom of Merika. And he and his counselors put forth a new way of disseminating propaganda–and it was called “talking points” memos. All the land ooh’ed and aah’ed, especially their knuckle-dragging cohorts in a house called Kapital, and among their drooling followers.
A news agency, named Fox, which was really Faux, for no such thing as actual news crossed its camera lens, watched in rapt attention and learned about “talking points.” Eager to help the boy wonder regent, they received their marching orders from the talking points heads, and dutifully regurgitated the phrase of the day through eight long and dark years.
Suddenly, the sun broke forth, and a sheriff was hired. He threw out all the propagandists and returned the kingdom to some sense of normalcy. Faux Noise, was distraught. How to keep their minions in line when actual governing was going on!
But wait, they had learned the fine ability to doublespeak and babble. “Just give ’em what we want to be truth, and they will know no better,” Rupert crowed. “These minions are barely sentient and surely can’t read or research our bucket of goo.”
So Faux started their own brand of “talking points” though they were careful to keep them oral, so no black hearted liberal might hack their emails and discover the fix was in. Suddenly the airwaves were filled with faux news–of birthers, and death panels, and other such fluffery. It seemed to work, but of course, we knew it would. Fox followers are not known to be able to do more than basic breathing.
One week the crew of the various scrabble shows decided that they would tell their minions, whose brains don’t take to actual thinking or recall, that the “good old days” were in jeopardy. It seems the sheriff, according to them, was about the business of “destroying the way of life they had all enjoyed as youngsters.”
Sean said it, and he was probably a child of the 70’s, and Billy said it, and he was a child of the 40’s. And Glenn said it and he was a child of Satan, and well, they all said it, and they used the same words and the same phrasing, so you know it must be true.
Then one of the Sheriff’s deputies (deputy in the sense of having a working mind), did a bit of research. Were all those memories of the “good old days” actually true? Deputy Comedy meister, Jon “Of Jersey” Stewart, reported that a fair examination of the various decades preceding, showed not a lot of “good” though there was plenty of “old.” There were nasty wars, depressions, economic downturns, oil crises, hostage taking, and the like in each and every one. Women were discriminated against, and so were people of color. It was hard to find much “good” on the national or international scene.
After all, it seemed to be that the “good old days” didn’t really exist at all. Each decade no doubt had plenty of personal happiness, but overall, we suffered from a number of malaise that we would not like to revisit today. The Stewart and his sidekick The Oliver, found that most people, (those who thought at least) didn’t remember the years of their growing up as glowing examples of perfection that the Faux Noise talking heads so effervescently approved of.
It was, alas, all a ploy to continue maligning the sheriff who was doing a pretty good job in actuality against very big odds. It turns out the boys of Faux were just pissy cuz nobody wanted to talk to them from the sheriff’s office any more. They had to stand at the back of the crowd and were seldom given a tidbit that they could get their teeth into. They were not “special” any more.
You see, it’s evolutionary that we have a strong capacity to “see” the best in the past. It keeps us going. But the best we see is personal, and not national. When we remember the world we lived in, we are glad to have survived at all! And the Faux fools knew that of course, but they also knew that appeals to the “glorious past” S O U N D true, and that’s all that matters in the world of Faux.
So our hats are off to Deputy Stewart and his crew for helping us to remember the truth. If the sheriff is about the business of trying to destroy the world we grew up in as kids (which there of course is no real evidence of anyway) that probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if it means that we are pushing for freedom for all, education for all, equality for all, and inclusion for all. But perhaps the Faux boys mean that their world was grand in those “olden” days. For they were white and male, and I guess, perhaps, they did see the world as arrayed at their feet as so many pearl filled oysters to pluck.
So maybe, they were just meanin’ that heck, they just wanted to be the fat, white, rich males in charge of everything again. Yeah, I bet they were. But that means we (all the rest of us) well, you probably have that figured out by now huh?
Just sayin’.
Existential Ennui 