Shiny surfaces spark paradoxical, dark perils, enabling shameless lying, bias-fueled sound bites, deceptive advertising, online propaganda and conspiracy delusions that defy understanding complexity
Who can argue that scorn for real-world depth creates powerless suckerdom and delivers ready hostages to controlling, oppressive forces? The predatory con “never gives a sucker an even break” when making make-believe and delusions seem plausible (then comes the fleecing). This is no modern problem, but far more daunting as we endure more skin-deep, in-your-face superficialities than ever. What voters, battered by 24/7 visual, mobile invasions, have potent defenses against bias-loaded, media manipulations, righteous mandates, war cries or crassly partisan values? Surfaces offer magic brass rings for fame and fortune, without which you are a failed loser as MAGA patriot, citizen and Christian.
Thus, my first eternal truth: we all need reliable knowledge as the first essential for positive life outcomes. Intellectual illiteracy and/or ignorance undermines the ability to assess the legitimacy of statements and conditions. Instead, the savvy activist works hard to appreciate both the truth of the obvious and the wisdom gained by mining depths. That meant for me reading the classics, learning from polished mentors and cultural whizzes, then thinking hard and long about what truly matters and what’s transient noise. I honed my early skepticism learning from Jean Shepherd, Pete Seeger and Tom Lehrer, then reading satirists like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Swift, Thoreau, Dickens, Twain, and Joyce. My sensitivity to surfaces attended to the renown literary scalpel that separates appearances from reality.
Real knowledge is, well, about reality
Knowledge isn’t just power but wide-ranging, irreplaceable modes to understand who we are, what worlds we inhabit, and what realistic choices and timely risk-taking advance our quest. The snookered and befuddled, stuck dumb by the window dressing of media surfaces, are the first hostages of demagogues. Those lacking in skepticism, judgment and analytic thinking rush to make “genuine” frauds messiahs, decoyed to vote against their own best interests. They never check the record or resume—or the crime sheet for self-declared heroes. Imagine being fixated on a “non-politician” who lies every five minutes but somehow by sheer magic “tells it like it is.” That fuels the most costly delusion, that this maverick “outsider” will represent the aggrieved better than tainted, hack politicians. What if the sham maverick stands alone for one person and one ego glory?
Whether pushing division and violence, cruel “jokes” or flippant “sarcasm,” gaslighting denials minimize indecency but not transparent racist, ethnic, class or gender stereotypes. If outrageous lies (the ultimate in surface dishonesty, withering under instant scrutiny) are repeated and believed outright, they gain legitimacy. Creepy reductionism, the base accepts, is “what winners” must do to get attention and overturn entrenched enemies. Thus, whites are superior to all others, men over women, native born “real Americans” over immigrants, and super-rich oligarchs over crass politicians demoted for seeing public service as get-rich schemes (so unlike the maverick messiah “so rich” he demands only $230 million in compensation for the necessity of defending himself against legitimate charges).
The siren call of surfaces enhances the most superficial distortions, that tariffs pay for themselves and stimulate blue collar growth, that “chaotic criminal/terrorist infestations” plague Democratic cities, or that the “big, beautiful” GOP tax giveaway is NOT one more vicious wealth transfer to the top. Really, don’t Dems get the joke? The hypocrisy is ultimate when lackeys say the Jester-in-chief is a great (lying) jokester when slandering Haitian immigrants: “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.” In fact, only the slavish Trump base ate this horse manure.
Gaslighting expands beyond politics
While tyrannical Trumpism most conspicuously feasts on surface mendacity, the modern era is swamped by creepy, pernicious performance schemes (yucky George Santos, right-wing shock jocks, deniers of serial murders), juvenile name-calling, crypto snake oil, laughable advertising (what, energy companies dispute climate change?), idiocy on autism and vaccines, illiteracy on healthy food and life-styles (bring on saturated fats and additive-rich junk food), the immigrant as “foreign threat” (in a nation made by immigrants??), financial ignorance galore (buy, buy buy! forget retirement). Finally there’s the wad of superficial, unspiritual religious nonsense: that faith alone (with donations) blesses you with the gospel of wealth (and heavenly pass), the Bible is literally true (didn’t God write it in English?), or that blasting intact procreative freedoms and/or posting the Ten Commandments in schools make you holy and elect.
As symbol and reality, the Trump mania for gold-veneer, pompous arches or mammoth ballrooms speaks to his surface obsession, with crass showiness allergic to democratic values. Peter York in 2017 captured all in his brilliant Politico take down, “Trump’s Dictator Chic.” Turns out bad taste goes with delusions of grandeur so first up in the tawdry, autocratic sweepstakes is “go big” as humongous, awe-inspiring spaces are de rigueur. Pile on golden gilt and huge mirrors (size trickery), along with gaudy reproductions of garish French decorations invoking Versailles and Napoleonic opulence. For York, everything is crowned, as it were, with the shiniest sheen of all, thus “Gold furniture, gold wall decorations, columns with gold capitals, gold taps. Bright gold, fake gold, shiny alloys for functional metalwork.”
The royalist, autocrat-in-training then packs in gobs of marble and glass enhanced by bright colors, showing no one else (alive) is rich (or dumb) enough to pull off epic phoniness. So wear sunglasses if you traipse through the crass D.J. Trump Memorial East Wing. Don’t miss the larger-than-life portrait pitching the sleaziest operator to degrade the “people’s house. Who cares that the aesthetic of the New World rebels consciously defied overwrought, European trumpery (see comment), for a less splashy, more democratic architecture? Trump’s mean-spirited governance matches his dreadful taste, a zenith of erratic, conspicuous consumption by the Grabber-in-chief who finds trifles like democracy, Constitutional and egalitarian values “so yesterday.” What dictator wouldn’t love throwing around tariff folly points like free poker chips, punishing elected foes, intimidating critical media, and killing life-saving medical research?
Of course, the surface (media) is the message, as grotesque palaces are not meant to live or relax in, but only to wow those with equally bad taste.
Let’s offset high maintenance costs for oversized vanity ballrooms by taxing the billions stolen when Trump, Inc. peddles fake merchandise, dishonestly overpriced coins, loyalty-testing mementos, or whatever junk gets jammed down sycophantic throats wanting a piece of the gruesome glory.
By the way, no one rejects amusing, harmless, surface entertainment. For circus acts, formula-driven soap operas or mindless TV sitcoms, spectacle is all, playing off the inside joke of how little moral, social or intellectual depth appears. Recall Seinfeld’s plotless comedy series, aptly conceded to be “about nothing.” Blowing bubbles, even blowing smoke that satirizes life as absurd, gob-smacking stunts, have their place. But who leaves a circus, whining about low philosophic depth? Or devalues vapid reality shows, barbecue showdowns or Duck Dynasty because they fall a tad bit short on enlightenment?
Surface addictions have dark, democratic downsides
Fixations with fake surfaces, however, are massive problems when they enable greedy, selfish control freaks to pull off abuses, especially riddled with pernicious racism, contempt for majority rule, scorn for law, courts, justice or the Constitution. Cults without principles beyond tribal selfishness are monumental obstacles to the aspirational Yankee idealism towards a “more perfect union,” beginning with reversing abortion bans and not invading peaceful towns with armed war soldiers—and more, retrieving and again advancing human rights, opportunities and freedoms.
In the end, only qualified experts with in-depth command of history and justice, if not governance, technology and science, can reverse the MAGA assault as it overstays its (un) welcome. Either America prosperity is keyed to addressing reality, or the politics of theatrical, superficial stunts will jeopardize what did make America great and what countless heroes died for. The last few years, indeed months, clearly dramatize against whom the best of America must battle and either inhibit or give up the ghost, namely: the rampaging, libertarian, fascistic billionaires out to increase corporate clout. It’s really coming down to whether the dictatorial billionaires continue to control so many surfaces in our world, or whether epic hornswoggling can be exposed so that true knowledge returns as our highest treasure.
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