Through the Looking Glass

 

February 23, 2019

 

When you’ve spent a decade and more immersed in bizarre conspiracy theories, suddenly finding oneself on the other side of the mirror must not feel much different.

Millions of Americans however – indeed the majority of voters – are daily alarmed by the bewildering antics on display in our Executive branch.  Government by tweet storm, cabinet scandals, bizarre interviews, constant haranguing of perceived enemies, trampling of norms of constitutional democracy and comportment, legislatures of primates willfully blocking any sensory perception – they are disappointing, frightening, and indeed altogether overwhelming to most of us.  There is, however, a noisy and resentful minority of Americans who gleefully relish the chaos on the canyon rim.  But why?  How, having lived alongside one another through decades of imperfect yet capable and professional leadership, can they suddenly countenance and even support such a national abasement?

Here's at least part of the answer: in the last decade, neither physical evidence nor proximity have proven a match for manufactured media bubbles.  President Obama never made Americans to submit to a shadowy new world order, nor hand over their guns, nor convert to Islam.  He was not a Kenyan-born Muslim bent on the destruction of the United States, and he never barred any of his fellow Christians (even his ironically controversial pastor in Chicago) from attending church on Sunday.  And again, with no small measure of irony, we can observe that he never deployed the U.S. Army to invade Texas, nor did he round up anyone and put them in FEMA cages atop Walmart stores.  He did not destroy the economy nor the equity markets – quite the contrary – which following an historic rise in valuations during his tenure, did not then perform an ignis fatuus about-face upon his departure.  Hillary was not found responsible for the violence in Benghazi, despite years of fruitless investigations, nor did the highest echelon of the Democratic Party operate a child sex ring out of a pizza joint in Northwest Washington, DC.   Any of us who remain connected to once-conservative America knows full well that all of these bizarre tales – and more – were incessantly peddled as truth for nearly a decade, stirring anger, spreading division, inspiring violent crimes, and sending armed men into the midst of horrified families. 

History will record that even the chronic and tired Republican specter, the mainstream media (or “MSM”) was itself complicit in the spread of disinformation, for years, as it regularly hosted Republican pundits, politicians, strategists, and agitators spewing half-truths, conspiracy theories, manufactured grievances, and outright lies, rarely questioning the veracity of such assertions or even pushing back at all, in some vain and misplaced effort to appear “fair and balanced” to a cohort of heel-dug Americans who would never acknowledge that same media’s impartiality or good faith, regardless.  Such tolerance, by 2016, had only served to erode the trust of those less inclined to critical thought.

Our friends, our grandmothers, the men from church – so many of them seem to inhabit some alternate reality we struggle to understand.  But one’s perception of normality is a product of one’s environment; it can of course be a virtual environment of our own choosing, and in today’s ubiquitously connected society, with its limitless trove of digital rabbit holes, our environment and thus our reality can be uniquely crafted to fit any individual preference.  And in the vast reaches of red post-Soviet America, absent the compelling immediacy of a cultural, intellectual, and socioeconomic mélange, it often is.

We are now – all of us – thrust through the looking glass, carried off by our own demons into a world where down is up, cruelty is cute, freedom is fealty, bully is best, and most of us scarcely recognize our fellow countrymen.