To follow up on my post from July 9, I’m about ready to give up.

The news about Mitch McConnell is causing me to question the validity of the news source I’ve been trusting during these years of so much misdirection and exaggeration. Last week, McConnell was on his death bed in a hospital somewhere, and his wife was out of the country so as to avoid signing a DNR order.

But this morning’s local paper had what appears to be a recent picture of McConnell and his wife, he looking comfortable, both smiling, and accompanied by an article with quotes from the man himself, talking, apparently, about what really happened a few weeks ago.

So, who does one believe anymore?

Do news outlets just sense the potential for a crazy story and overreact, make stuff up? Or is someone still lying here? Has AI been employed somehow, or is it just difficult for someone who has never respected McConnell (me) to come to terms with the fact that all this talk about death beds and DNRs and the potential upheaval in the Senate is fabricated, or at least irresponsibly covered?

It’s enough to make one want to swear off trying to remain informed and engaged any longer. Then again, isn’t this exactly where Trump and Co. want us to be?

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In the absence of anything substantial in the way of information, a vacuum can be created, a void into which opinion and conjecture are inserted and assumptions made. The news—what there is of it—about Mitch McConnell is case in point.

There appears to be some medical issue unfolding for weeks now, and the public has been largely kept in the dark about it. Theories abound, the most prominent of which is that Republicans are strategizing and trying to avoid certain eventualities and timeframes so as not to jeopardize their current advantage in the Senate.

McConnell’s wife is not even in the country, the theory here being that she will be unavailable to sign a DNR order until August 3 or thereafter. So, apparently we are to assume that the Senator is on life support and will remain so until it is advantageous to remove him?

See? In the absence of solid info, theories will be floated, and conclusions will be drawn.

Are we supposed to care about Taylor and Travis’s wedding? I suppose it took people’s minds off other things that have been nagging at us, but in the larger scheme of things, it’s not unlike a royal wedding—an event that draws outsized media coverage and allows the masses to drool over how the 1-percenters live.

Sure, I might be a bit envious about using Madison Square Garden as the venue, that Adam Sandler officiated, that they marry their fortunes together and will never want for anything. But that jealousy will fade quickly, because there are much more pressing events and issues vying for our attention.

For some, it’s a pleasant distraction and a celebrity fix. For me, these or any nuptials don’t really belong in the multi-media sphere, are much ado about nothing, and I’m mystified by the attention paid them.

The news comes in waves.

Mitch McConnell—is he alive, or at least conscious? Is Putin as evil and crazy as he wants to make us think? Is Trump going to blow up NATO? Did Trump interfere in the process of getting Mr. Balogun back for the Belgium match? That worked out, well, about as expected. Balogun’s presence didn’t matter. In fact, it may have messed with the U.S. players’ mojo, and all Trump really did was to hand Belgium additional motivational fodder and confirm us to be the bad guys the world already suspects us to be.

Did the latest news about Graham Platner’s checkered past hit of its own accord, or was this a calculated, well-timed Republican ploy to drag a potential challenger to Susan Collins even deeper into the mud? If so, how much did the woman who came forward with the allegation get paid?

Politics is indeed a slimy, cutthroat business, and humans can so readily indulge the enterprise. To add to the mess, Donald Trump is so damned inspirational in this regard.

In an old post from July 5, 2020, I was doing a post-mortem on Donald and Melania’s appearance at Mt. Rushmore the previous day, where he gave one of his screeds dressed as a speech in front of 7500 maskless disciples who thumbed their noses at the pandemic in order to come and listen to their fearless leader spend who knows how long spewing more Milleresque poison.

I added at the end that Gutzon Borglum, the brainchild of the landmark, was associated with the KKK. This has gotten me thinking about the messiness of our history and how we grow up learning only parts of stories about places like Mt. Rushmore, often excluding how the local native American tribes, for example, didn’t want a gigantic monument to Manifest Destiny and four white guys, two of whom were slave holders, emblazoned on the side of a mountain on what they considered sacred land.

That whole scene from six years ago was surreal, and now Trump is back, elected to office for a second time, and still dropping hints about wanting to have his face added to the four who are already there.

Sure, why not? It’s not even ridiculous anymore. It actually makes sense, if one understands such a thing to be just the latest attempt at distraction, another tactic that he hopes will get us off the Epstein scent.

Or maybe he’s finally going off the deep end.