At some point, many wake up to the deception.
The motivation, for example, for heading back to the moon isn’t as much about the indomitable human spirit as it is a fear of placing second to a political and cultural rival– China, or maybe Russia.
The verbal combativeness, misdirection, and creepily slanted patriotic vomit spilling from Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, J.D. Vance, Fox News, Newsmax and the rest isn’t really about loving America and doing what’s in the best interest of most Americans as much as it is emotional blackmail and gaslighting and subversive efforts to bring the country to its knees—all in order to secure a consolidation of power, white privilege, and a ghastly, dystopian restoration of “Christian” values.
Donald Trump, I imagine, has been only too happy about the seeming fact that enough of us are still acting like we were born yesterday. Enough of us are still eating out of his hand, still viewing him as a refreshing, even messianic, take-no-prisoners straight talker who bad-mouths people who support heinous programs like SNAP and Social Security and school lunches and solar energy and scientific research that leads to vaccines and other life-saving innovations.
The Republican party is full of smooth-talking word gymnasts and groupies who can influence outcomes and distract and confuse and deceive, who don’t think twice about lying and doing whatever they can to get us to doubt our own intentions and second-guess America’s goodness, or disparage it as pie-in-the-sky idealism.
It may be the most insidious aspect of this anomalous, aberrant occurrence we’ve come to know as the Trump years: that lying is acceptable, having grown so commonplace as to be mistaken for authenticity.
May we live to see a renaissance of the concept of consensus, and a rebirth of trust born of genuinely honorable intent.
3 Cents' 