HG Wells (in 1920) nailed our current plight: “History is a race between education and catastrophe.”
Of all the narratives that MAGA Trump has trashed beyond absurdity, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes at least presents a legitimate, fairy tale emperor—however vain, gullible and bereft of clothes. Suddenly, one fearless child, wiser than MAGA, declares the horrifyingly “naked truth.” Perhaps this emperor’s exposed “equipment” didn’t amplify his humiliation. But all we have is a pretend, stumbling, bumbling, incoherent “emperor” locked into wrath, bunkum and havoc. Where’s the buyers’ remorse refund post for the back stabbed, bludgeoned and betrayed?
Alas, no truth-telling child, adult or AI robot boasts a big enough megaphone to puncture MAGA resistances of confirmation bias. Elsewhere, growing multitudes, in horror and certainty, confirm the true and only source of the most damaging fake news—the spewing bellower of laughable propaganda. Adding to the amusement, the fairy tale posits only the most intelligent can contradict all sensory perceptions that leave nothing to the imagination. Today’s great MAGA irony—only the least informed cult suckers declare their guy still wears the perfect “clothes” to save the world—betrayed by demonic, self-serving Dem defiance.
Right, just what we need—a deluded bevy of boorish national destroyers, driven by typical MAGA fury, manic headline-grabbing and delusions of persecution. Only a reckless crony of corrupt criminals defy the difference between using just prosecutions to save America vs. the all too successful machinations by the Destroyer-in-chief and enablers to escape liability. This phony WH emperor doesn’t only have the wrong end of the stick, quipped one UK wit on war, tariffs, and inflation, he’s got the entirely wrong stick.
Inching towards a super-majority, Never Trumpers aren’t just appalled at the relentless boomerang of dead-ends; millions can no longer even imagine a worse president, terrified the flood of lawbreaking and busted (inverted) promises won’t weaken the dam further. While this mad Captain Ahad fecklessly hunts down novel ways to gamble away America’s integrity, MAGA marks won’t leave the shipwreck coming apart at the seams. Done with a domestic round of wrecking balls, Trump desperately lurches overseas to maximize his disaster list by losing at jive jingoism in Iran. Oops, wished away its potent geographic leverage.
Really, without Iran, what bullying, bellicose belligerent stands proud next to Putin, Netanyahu, and fellow war-mongers—joining the current “alpha male” hall of shame? Despite economic devastation, murder at sea, farcical takeovers, an indefensible war, spineless Rethug officials also refuse to cry out, “No clothes, no brains, no judgment, no hat, no steak,” just the smoking, burnt sizzle of high-tech civilian murders and urban wastelands? Makes one nostalgic for an innocuous, merely foolish naked emperor strolling in his new, invisible finery.
The nakedness of a broken system
Shockingly denuded of rational leadership, America is unmoored, careening towards a cataract waterfall, all because one convicted con artist fooled enough dim people enough of the time to wrest authoritarian power into his petty, scandalous little hands. That a single, unfeeling moral midget commands the world, blackmailing the planet with absurd yet catastrophic threats, is unbelievable enough. That he was elected adds to the unbelievability. Yet, worst of all, invoking Shakespearean tragedy, there’s no functional accountability against chronic fallibility in free fall, thus indicting the Constitution and the nation. Impeachment/conviction folly, even the 25th Amendment, are turned cosmic jokes. I envy no historian obliged to explain what’s nearly unexplainable. For now, we can only concede this mammoth, begrudging insight – how mortifying: one crude, ham-fisted con artist, swelled by arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity, is all it took to topple this “naked” beacon of democracy. Figure even worse with a Putin in charge.
The population in a decade or two will look aghast at how grasping MAGA extremophiles hijacked a once honorable nation, in descent as a major power. Time to stop blaming the suckered minority who’ve lost the capacity to know better. Time to accept that all of America is responsible for the national self-destruction well underway. Commonplace wisdom posits that only the most formidable of enemies unify a democratic people. Because MAGA is that self-evident enemy of humane, civilized governance, here and abroad, both detachment and cynicism approach complicity. If a demented, inept control freak cannot be stopped, sooner rather than later, then even worse, harder to predict scenarios can strike a passive electorate.
Countries without moral maps stay lost
As Bob Woodward instructed on MSNOW last week, quoting the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you are going, any path will get you there.” America is not just lost, with a wildly unreliable MAGA map, but, like Trump, seems abysmally unaware of full, direct consequences from more of the same. By attacking NATO and favoring Russia in Ukraine, without any “America First” benefits, Trump proves again his role as “useful Idiot” and/or Russian asset. Who cares if treachery is done consciously, done under threat of humiliation, or bizarre unconscious motivations no one may even truly probe?
To echo, alas, a partially true AlterNet headline, “Only Trump could make America fold this fast.” Only passive or oblivious Americans not rushing to the barricades and making loud voices make America fold this fast. No man is an island, even the most insular president in history. Without spineless Rethugs, more terrified of MAGA primary foes than losing their seats outright in November, Congress would clearly reject an evil war that tops any previous “worst foreign policy decisions ever”—such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Or the tragic Vietnam, depending on your measuring stick.
We lack even the solace of the finale of The Wild Bunch: “It ain’t what it used to be but it will do.” Alas, more rounds of moronic, careening MAGA misjudgments will only reinforce the dire, clothed truth that “it will not do.” Beyond millions of No Kings protesters, more still silent, remote or uninvolved citizens must take to the streets, communicate with the elected, defy authoritarian Rethug lackeys. boycott MAGA enablers, call for general strikes and commit to 1960’s-style civil disobedience. Or whatever throws legal wrenches into the ab-normalcy of now. No doubt the Reagan-Bush-Tea Party-MAGA rebellion against New Deal progressivism was triggered by the noble advances and cultural diversity that marked the 1960’s. We need to resurrect, in language grossly purloined by hypocritical fundamentalists, those courageous, steadfast, heroic times. Sovereignty, if not barbarism, is on the line when an immoral president threatens the “civilization” of any entire country, whether our own and some third-rate theocracy fabricated as the enemy.
We have met the MAGA enemy in all its chaotic destructiveness—and we remain complicit unless we learn how to resist bold threats to freedom by a power-grabbing minority. And these foes are grabby indeed—well financed and dogged in their crusade against the glories of law, immigration, diversity and openness. Being “woke” in every sense of the word is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have. As George Conway just said, “The reality is overcoming the unreality that you have to maintain in your split brain to be a Trumpist.” We can’t let even more of that unreality continue the affliction. Only concerted, direct action defeats ongoing, unchecked, internal self-destruction. Proving that failed dictators are mortal, the defeat of Viktor Orbán shows that a true liberation day is not beyond our reach.
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